This explanation makes a lot of sense. I was scrolling through the thread looking to see if this just some rumor or a made-up technology.
When I traveled to China frequently enough to soak up some aspects of city life I really enjoyed seeing the outdoor activities: Dancing grannies, martial arts classes in parks, old guys playing cards on folding tables in alleyways.
The return of "boom boxes" is ruining areas of US parks. This is facilitated by some smart phones with loud volumes or attachments to smart phones that turn them into boom boxes. I dont want hear other people loud music at times. P.s. these devices are on bicycles and hikers too.
Drones too!! So loud and obnoxious. You don't need overhead footage for your social in one of the most photographed places in a popular national park.
The music thing is a big issue in the climbing community, mostly younger / newer climbers. I don't mind in some places if they are somewhat contained and they ask first. but not in national parks, nothing loud, and nothing obnoxiously distracting.
Some funny 'drama' on Instagram between a very skilled teenager and an older leader in the community. Kid played music in a national park and complained about not being able to find stashed pads on Instagram (leaving large foam in a national park === bad).
The older community leader posted a photo of him and park rangers taking trash/pads down. Didn't mention the kid but oh boy that kid did what a lot of teenagers do and barfed out a lot of drama. it was funny to read. Made me feel very much in old man on the stoop territory. There were more supporters taking the side that stashing pads and playing music is acceptable in a national park, and the older leaders who actually interact with rangers are 'gate keeping' and just don't understand ;0
Crash pads. It’s what boulderers (climbers who climb smaller technical routes) use to fall on. They usually have straps and you wear them like backpacks.
Comment below got it! The problem with leaving them outside is animals get into them and try to eat/tear out the foam. When the foam gets out it starts splitting into chunks and goes everywhere.
Is it physically possible? Theoretically like what is the quietest we could go?! Is it just the motor or is there some sound generated just by moving air around?
I've seen some people doing work on this [1]. I can't remember how much was actually making the drones quieter vs doing signal processing to remove the sound from on-board audio capture.
This trend seems to extend to the UK too. To be honest, I don't mind it in open public spaces likes parks and such. I mostly travel on the London underground though, which is cramped place at the best of times, and a frankly ridiculous amount of people have recently started listening to music through their loudspeaker on full volume.
The most baffling part is it's often people on their own, not in groups. Every time I think to myself that now might be the time to pull out the old homemade EMP gun and take it for a spin.
I'm no sociologist, but I'm guessing it's a kind of self-expression and attention seeking, they want people to notice them - and negative attention is also attention.
My personal peeve is when people do this at the beach. (Including my friends!) Like, you have headphones. You can enjoy your music. A big part of the fun, for me, is hearing the water and gulls and sand and waves.
It came as a surprise to me but some people are extremely uncomfortable when their environment is silent or at least quieter than they are used to.
I went to camping on Dartmoor with a friend about a decade ago, he just started screaming out and playing music out of nowhere. He grew up in London like me and for some reason he was unable to handle the absence of noise when we were the only people who miles around.
The beach is plenty loud and disruptive, so, while a nuisance to me, I’m sort of ok with the music. Parks are different — they’re habitats for wild life, and the implicit contract is that we get to enjoy that wild life’s presence as long as we’re not too disruptive. Loud music from a boom box in that context is much more damaging than at the beach.
Headphones are fantastic nowadays. Make your eardrums bleed without bothering anyone.
While we're at it, I hate rock cairns too, aside from those used to actually help people by marking routes. I didn't go to the forest to see trash, graffiti, rock cairns, or other man-made creations.
In my local nextdoor.com thread there was a GIANT flamewar over rock cairns and inspirational painted rocks along hiking trails. "But think of the children!" who like painting rocks and leaving inspirational messages!!
I briefly thought about painting and leaving some "demotivational rocks" around until I realized I'd have to actually collect, paint and distribute rocks to make that happen.
Can you explain the hate for rock cairns to me? I don't hike so I'm not creating them, but to me they seem to violate the letter of "leave no trace", but not the spirit.
In some ways I’d argue it’s a particularly egregious violation of the spirit of leave no trace.
Littering saves yourself the hassle of cleaning up after yourself. Leaving crash pads behind serves a need for safety. These are selfish acts that benefit you for practical reasons while ignoring the well-being of the environment around you.
Rock cairns, while (probably) less damaging, serve no purpose other than leaving a trace for the sake of leaving a trace.
Isn't damage to the environment the most important consideration? Crash pads are made of polymer foams and doubtlessly degrade over time, polluting the environment. That seems indisputably worse to me that stacking a few rocks.
Ultimately parks belong to all
of us. People putting up these things are really planting a flag out of a sense of pride.
The problem with emotional acts is that it provokes different responses in people. An innocent stack of rocks gets bested by a bigger one. The bigger stack gets bested by a wider one. The wider one gets trumped by a painted one, and so on.
Look at the example of Mt Everest. Many parts of it are a high altitude garbage dump, turning a unique place into a sort of monument to the throngs of bored dentists looking for a thrill.
They destroy the natural environment. Perhaps not as much as if you cut down the trees and built a cabin, but you are still changing the natural landscape in a way that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Yes, I think this is the idea. That people go out in the nature, and want to see as few man-made stuff (or other people) as possible. I think it's especially bad in places where otherwise the nature seems undisturbed.
This concept is a bit weird if you think about it though. This is about Homo sapiens enjoying a model (according to Homo sapiens) of a world where Homo sapiens does not exist. This model world is confined to precise borders defined by Homo sapiens and other Homo sapiens are expected to play along and maintain this illusion. We Homo sapiens call that "nature" and love to drive there in our cars and walk around.
I agree, "nature", as we talk about it, is definitely a spectrum. Like how much "from scratch" people make a spaghetti for example. Is it from scratch if you buy the sauce? If you make the sauce from store bought tomato and sauce powder? Only if it's from tomato and spices that you mix yourself? Or only if the tomato is from your own garden?
Definitely interesting to explore these boundaries.
The thing is, the argument against stacking rocks or playing music is intellectually dishonest. Other species have no qualms about modifying their environment. A crow on a tree won't shut up. A squirrel will not decide to carry a nut to a specific location in the name of sustainability. They are perfectly selfish and engaged in a war for survival. That is what species actually do, naturally.
The people who are against music and cairns in parks are not protecting any natural law. They are protecting their specific terraforming project, a park. It is driven by a purely human concept of "sustainability" and cannot possibly be something that existed in a world without humans.
Now, that is a nice terraforming project they are protecting (notice how "nice" is another human concept?) We also tend to spend a lot of energy protecting species that trigger the same neural pathways in our brains as human babies, even if the species would most likely go extinct without our intervention (pandas).
What environmentalism actually does is act as a brake on our other terraforming projects, allowing us to go on terraforming longer and not turn our environment into something inhospitable. But even that is entirely anthropocentric.
Sure, and I like my nature walks as much as the next person. I just find it weird that after pushing animals into what amounts to a reservation and doing as we please to the environment outside of these carefully drafted borders we worry so much about a stack of rocks. You know, a squirrel can carry an acorn around too and have an effect on where an oak tree will grow. The only way to not affect the environment is to not exist. The so-called home for these animals is as much our artificial creation as a factory or a nuclear power plant.
Unpopular opinion - I use speakers on my bicycle. I used to have a lot of problems with pedestrians not noticing me and even other bikers that were fixed by using my phone's speakers at the 80% settings and playing music on them.
Think of it as my own version of the noise emitting devices on EVs. On the one hand I kind of feel like a dick but on the other hand I still make much less noise than a car and there's no other way of people knowing I'm there when they don't have LOS.
This seems short sighted to me. Playing loud music might make it safer for you to cycle, but will also contribute to the public's general resentment towards cyclists. That resentment manifests as opposition to bike lanes, and unfortunately, drivers who deliberately fuck with cyclists.
I understand this, but at the same time, cyclist-pedestrian collisions also contribute to the public's resentment towards cyclists. I'm not sure which is worse, an admittedly small chance of hitting a pedestrian or annoying them with my music for 2-3 seconds. On the balance of my safety as I have unfortunately come close to such accidents many times, the choice is not so hard.
I'd like to emphasize that the music is not that loud - when I'm close to a car I can barely hear it.
Anecdotally, I use a bike bell and I've never collided with a pedestrian. And when in the role of pedestrian myself, the only time I've ever had trouble with cyclists is when they didn't ring their bell (or have one to ring) or when a cyclist deliberately passed as close as possible to me (I suspect in some selfish attempt to not lose energy with a more courteous but very slightly longer diversion from their straight line of travel.)
I really think a bike bell should be sufficient for your needs. A card in your wheel spokes would also get the job done and be a lot less obnoxious than music.
Without protected bike lanes and actual enforcement against homicidally reckless drivers, we who cycle have to be shortsighted and obnoxious to live to tomorrow. Making noise and being covered in terrible blinky shit are well within the bounds of reason.
A bike bell is not going to work, I don't see them. If I saw them I could always talk to them.
Pedestrians need to notice me because a lot of people walk on bike paths and because a lot of people jaywalk. Since I'm much closer to the parked cars and much smaller than cars they're going to realize there's no cars, think it's all clear, and when they advance I'll be there. It happened to me often.
It's not loud enough that people on the sidewalk will hear me clearly - in traffic I often can't even distinguish my own music - but people that are on my way or about to walk in front of me will notice and that's good enough.
Also in my city when there's an underpass the law is to go on the sidewalk, so I like to be noticed by pedestrians so they know I'm here without ringing my bike bell non-stop or speaking to everyone and trying to get them to notice me.
Thanks for explaining, I’ve always wondered why so many people seem to use boom boxes on bikes.
I wonder if there’s some happy medium - some noise that the bike could make periodically that’s less annoying than blaring music, but also doesn’t require you to actively initiate it.
It's not possible to ride defensively against a person popping out of a car. There is also no safe speed which is reasonable for actually using the road where this doesn't happen. I'm also not going to slow down to 12km/h on protected bike paths because people want to walk there. I think being noticed is part of driving defensively in those situations.
>So, get off the bike and walk
I am not supposed to and I frankly just don't have the time to walk every time there is an underpass, and there are 6 on the way to my university.
I think I'm very different from those car drivers because I'm not endangering or pushing away anyone, or being aggressive.
What do you mean? I am doing exactly what is expected of me. I am allowed to cycle on sidewalks when it's an underpass, that's the law in my city, because many cyclists were killed. There are even signs on the entrance of every underpass where there is no protected bike lane indicating that bicycles should go on the sidewalks.
I haven't made any judgments of value, mind you. I'm just saying that this is the only way I have of averting this issue.
That's the compromise in my city. I am allowed and expected to cycle in the sidewalk along an underpass. That means inevitably that I'm going to pass pedestrians. There are signs before warning pedestrians that there will be cyclists, but many seem not to get the memo.
It's not about what you are legally allowed to do, it's about the basic traffic principle that those inside bigger/heavier vehicles are responsible for the safety of those outside. The same principle that applies to cars -> cyclists applies to cyclists -> pedestrians.
You can try to justify reckless behavior however you want, but saying "I had the speaker blasting on high to warn pedestrians" is never going to be a valid excuse if you get to run over an elderly person with hearing problems or a distracted child.
Bike bells work really well. It drives me nuts when bikes ride up on me and make zero effort to ring the bell right there on their handle. If they did this, I would be out of the way by the time they got to me. I have no problem jumping out of the way.
As someone who dislikes boomboxes in public, I have to say bikes are the one place where I think playing loud(ish) music makes sense.
Unlike cars, bikes are very quiet and if a pedestrian comes out jaywalking from between parked cars, the biker might not have enough time to react and ring their bell.
By the time a bell rings, the collision is imminent. Music can be heard from far enough that a jaywalker can avoid the collision path preemptively.
That’s actually a good idea. Music is out of the question for my preference, but some sort of noticeable but ignorable white noise like generated by EVs would work well. Electric bikes have almost gotten me more than a couple times, they are way too quiet and just sneak up on you.
I think the biggest issue with white noise is that bikes don't have cabin isolation. If you're trying to make white noise that people can hear through traffic ~5m away from you, it's going to be really loud to the rider! Music has that problem too, but it's easier to bear or even enjoy, and you can tune it out more easily than white noise.
I certainly agree that ebikes can sneak up on you. Personally though, I would give up riding a bike if I had to use a fairly loud white noise generator.
Nature sounds would be good for humans, but they might be disruptive to the fauna. Perhaps there's something that can be done about that though.
All the EVs I’ve encountered with white noise output have been quite reasonable. At the lower spectrum, it is only audible a few meters away, and you can tune it out easily once you realize what it is.
Whether phone speakers are good enough to replicate that experience, however, I’m not sure.
In the Netherlands they introduced legislation last year that bans the use of smartphones while cycling (penalty of €95 fine), that ban also included wearing earbuds. So, using a speaker on a bike is safer, I guess?
I have had to find more remote hiking locations to get away from the increasingly prevalent use of (awful sounding) bluetooth speakers on hiking trails. I have definitely fantasized about "loudly broadcasting" on the same frequencies that BT uses to get a bit of peace and quiet.
I would never do this because there are probably some highly unfortunate unintended consequences and I don't want to go to jail.
I wonder what's driving the upsurge? It's the same in the UK too.
I remember being at a park party a few months ago with some fellow 20-25 year olds; I suggested turning the music down, but it took the police to kindly ask for the request to be heeded. What astonished me was that the 20 something girls were indignant at the police's request, as if their human rights were violated.
Maybe they spent too much time socializing on the internet (where manners are in short supply and consequences for rudeness nonexistent), and not enough time socializing in the real world (where being rude will eventually get you punched in the face.)
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households."
Just because it's been said many times before, doesn't mean it was wrong each of those times. There may be periods where children get worse, and times when children get better. I believe your 'rebuttal' is whig history; a fallacy wherein you assume that history has a linear narrative, trending inexorably only in one direction.
Where is the society of Socrates today? Athenian hegemony peaked during Socrates lifespan. But you assume his observations about the declining society he was witness to are wrong? Why? Because we have such marvelous advanced technologies and social ideas today and you interpolate a straight line between these points? That interpolation is whig history.
It's because the police doesn't inspire respect anymore. They have violated people's rights too often (in the US mainly), and in the UK they just look comical in a lot of cases. It's the uniforms and the general fitness levels.
I don't mind police, but they need to work on discipline. They need to be around more even when they're not responding to anything (proactive instead of reactive).
Back in the day (not my day mind you, lol), every neighbourhood would have a neighbourhood policeman that would do the rounds, do a chat with the locals, that kinda thing. But that was the same time where people working for the post were still respected (by their employer); uniform, full-time job and benefits, the works. Nowadays it's an underpaid part-time mcjob.
Noticed this when I moved to SF a couple of years ago. No idea why it's so popular here compared to Toronto, especially when people are alone and can just wear earbuds.
I live in Shanghai and yes this is a real problem, but it's not just problem with square dancing, but older generations in general here.
While there are of course lot of polite civilized old people, many of them have absolutely no respect for environment or rules.
You'll often see them throwing waste oil to the streets, littering, yelling/screaming in public for no reason, breaking every single traffic rule in existence, jumping the queue in supermarkets etc.
Lot of of younger and/or "less older" generations are also pissed off about this and local governments here in SH and elsewhere are trying to create new regulations to mitigate these issues:
https://www.shine.cn/news/nation/2108183694/
I think it's a byproduct of a deep cultural thing. In East Asian countries, there's a strong culture of respecting your elders. In China, it seems this sometimes manifests in a peculiar way where people getting older start to act as if they're entitled to unconditional respect and they abuse the heck out of it (abusing the heck of unspoken gray areas also appears to be another chinese cultural peculiarity). "I had to put up with my elders, now it's your turn to put up with me" is a pretty accurate summary of how some people seem to think/act.
My mother-in-law is quite a reasonable and well respected person (she was a teacher and gets gifts from ex-students to this day, and she doesn't even live in China anymore), but the fights my wife has gotten into with her due to this "respect for elders" thing are... something else.
The whole dynamic reminds me of a tradition in Brazil where senior students in universities play pranks on new students. The general gist is that pranks can be pretty nasty (getting your head shaved and your face covered in paint is standard fare treatment and things just get worse from there), and the tradition gets passed on in a "now it's my turn to be nasty" sort of way. Predictably, things can and have gotten out of hand on several occasions and pretty much everyone knows of at least one urban legend/story of someone drowning or getting seriously injured in some other way. Unsurprisingly, some schools ban these pranks, not unlike these regulations you mentioned.
I remember a lot of this when I was living in SF's Chinatown. Personally, I thought it was a great part of the community and I was impressed by how healthy the elderly people in the area where.
I can see how the music could be frustrating, but I think it would really be unfortunate if this part of the culture went away.
Funny story about dancing grannies in Taipei, back in 2016. My boss asked me to go up from Kaohsiung to attend the Python Conference. But I was facing some very tight financial times, and paying several thousand NTD for the conference fee (which wasn't refunded by the company later) was difficult for me.
So I took a cheap night bus instead of HSR train, rode a city bike instead of the MRT, and arrived at 6 am for the conference at 11 am, hoping to sneak inside the conference venue during setup.
How could I loiter there without attracting attention? Well, there were a group of grannies dancing. So I joined them!
We had a great time, and some of them even offered to introduce me to their granddaughters. And when the time came, I bid them farewell, tailgated into the venue, opened my laptop and looked busy. The dancing grannies were so hospitable, though, welcoming a crazy foreign boy and being rather too trusting.
I live in a city, and accept that dealing with noise is a part of life. And I expect these dance-exercise meetings are actually great for the people who participate; certainly here in the US I know that the elderly often feel alone and have trouble maintaining social relationships the older they get. Not to mention getting outside and exercising is great for physical health.
But if you wake me up early in the morning with loud music I will end you.
"Viral videos and reports have shown the groups arguing and fighting with basketball players to take over their court, or, in one case, breaking into a football field and stopping the game to dance in the space, prompting a police response and arrests."
That seems pretty unruly, but it could easily be the vast exception.
> But if you wake me up early in the morning with loud music I will end you.
Easy there, John Wick.
Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monastery in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Colombian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, and devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
“Most of them are the products of the Red Guard era, they don’t respect society or the environment,” said a young Chinese resident of Guiyang, who did not want to be named.
“Square dancing is a problem left over from history. Many elderly people feel that the whole China is built by their generation. They have the absolute voice and status. We young people have done nothing, and of course are not qualified to question them.”
I grow up in Beijing and I have to say this is not accurate but statement like this surely is eye-catching in western media...
My view on this is that the old generation just don't have the habit and common courtesy of living in cities, they lived in poor rural areas for many years before come to the city.
Things like queueing, keep voice down was simply not needed outside of city, The young generation is much better at these, though still have plenty of space to improve!
> According to the Post, square dancing has its roots in the Cultural Revolution, particularly the great link-up of 1965 and the educated youth campaign in 1969. The damas are of middle age because square dancing links back to these moments of their youth when collectivism was an important social value in China.
I agree that the 60s has a link to this collective activity, but I believe they do it now to exercise and socialise, it's not a power move or anything. The Chinese society are ashamed of that period, and a power move like that will back fire.
Another part in play could be the Confucius culture, some stubborn elders would expect respect from youngsters even though they are the annoying kid.
Very much yes. Imagine all the obnoxiousness of current internet cultural wars. Red guard is that, except it was a literal physical cultural war and they were the winners, which shaped their identities and sense of entitleness. It's a cohort with very strong personalities from a era where lack of shame was both a survival mechanism and got you far.
Having done some traveling internally in China, there is an interesting generational thing: Grannies will throw an elbow and cut in line, expecting you will let them. I learned to block the pass with my wheelie bag.
I would think that the people currently having kids are the boomers in China, because they are the ones who benefit from the wealth being generated today the way boomers in the US and western Europe did in the 50s and onwards.
In terms of political and cultural impact in the United States the defining characteristic of the Baby Boomers is not the wealth they grew up with but their sheer number.
Their number was a result of a post WW2 boom. In China the boom was even more so since a lot more people were lost in the war, then the civil war, then the Korean war, and then famines in the 1950s.
Yep, and this can be extrapolated onto societies as well. Richer societies have lower birth rates than poorer societies. They balance it out somewhat with a longer average lifetime though.
I think the boomers were overall wealthier than the Greatest Generation and that's also why they had fewer children.
I visited Chengdu (among others) in 2017/2018 and saw the square dancing many times. Always found it charming, especially seeing that the elderly have some active ways to spend their time. It must be good for their health.
But yes they really tend to blast their music very loud.
Already back then, the People's Park had decibel meters in every spot the oldies congregated, warning them if they went over the limit.
Once I also watched quite an old gentleman performing (singing live to a backing track) folk songs from Inner Mongolia. He was really good at this and his voice was very moving.
Happens in the community center lawn across the street from my house in the Seattle area. I can hear the music in my front yard but not inside my house.
I do wish mainland Chinese were a little more mindful of others, especially in foreign countries.
When I lived in Japan (high school exchange) there was neighborhood "radio taiso" in the morning. I got the impression that people loved it and it was one of those things that made living in a dense city tolerable -- a little bit of routine, a little bit of meeting your neighbors before work/school. It is amazing to me that China wants to ban it because it's loud.
My impression is that radio taiso is quite a bit tamer than dancing grannies. The former is usually mellow with slower tempos and relaxing uplifting vibes and it's really meant to be something for all ages; the latter is closer to electronic/club music, with faster tempos, and more aggressive beats (and yes, it's quite a bit louder too).
In my experience, radio taiso also inherits a lot of the japanese polite culture. When I was young, my experience was that radio taiso always took consideration of surroundings: it was always in a designated space and time (e.g. the school gymnasium before class), whereas my experience w/ dancing grannies is that they just kinda make a habit of showing up at privately owned public spaces (e.g. malls) early enough in the morning and in a large enough group of people that security guards don't want to bother dealing with them.
Got it. That wasn't clear to me from the article -- I guess I assumed it was more chill and just in public parks in the middle of the day. If it's indoors at a shopping center, I see why that would annoy people.
China doesn't want to ban it, just some grumpy people. There's always some grumpy person who blames loud neighbors for their own life or sleep problems.
personally i am not grumpy about my life and/or sleep problems because i do not have neighbors that are loud and wake me up in the morning with loud music
Interesting... I've been to China a few times (Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, others...) and my experience has been a little different.
I didn't notice so much "just grannies", but couples, and it was mainly ballroom dance, not square dancing. I don't speak much Chinese, but ballroom styles are fairly universal, and the women were delighted to dance with a foreigner. Younger generations just kinda sat around on their phones but didn't seem bothered.
"Square dancing" here is I think a fairly awkward translation by the author. "Square" here refers a location, as in "public square" or "field". The literal chinese is 广场舞. 广场: public square (like Times Square or Tiananmen Square, but more commonly an open area in a park); 舞: dance.
Put it together... "square dance". Hm. Accurate in a word-by-word literal sense, but the article writer is being obtuse in ignoring the more popular usage of "square dancing".
I think "field dancing" or "park dancing" might be a less confusing translation that stays relatively literal.
Though... if you're searching your memory for where you've seen this before and trying to remember by dance style... honestly I'd say it significantly resembles line dancing (which still shouldn't be confused with square dancing). Usually no caller (as far as I've seen), but everyone's listening to the same music, facing the same direction, and doing the same dance moves. Generally no partners--just a grid of people individually dancing in unison.
I would probably accept "line dancing grannies" as a reasonable translation. Less literal, but more descriptive.
Ya, square dancing in China literally means dancing in some kind of public square (which almost all parks in China have). They aren't doing the Macarena (usually).
Whether there is a caller or not is usually left to local culture. Not sure how ayi gets translated to granny, however.
This sounds like a bad device. The fact that people will use the squares and parks for large activities like this is a really good part of Chinese culture. You bring together community, you get exercise, etc. That's a great thing. US really underutilizes public spaces and many things become a financial transaction. This is just one of the many reasons why Chinese cities are almost universally better than American cities (more walkable, better transit, easy navigation, more public spaces. Though they do love their super blocks).
>But neighbours complain it has gotten out of control, with competing groups blasting their music over each other in small areas, and bullying those who try to intervene. Viral videos and reports have shown the groups arguing and fighting with basketball players to take over their court, or, in one case, breaking into a football field and stopping the game to dance in the space, prompting a police response and arrests.
>Some disputes have escalated to violence.
>“Most of them are the products of the Red Guard era, they don’t respect society or the environment,” said a young Chinese resident of Guiyang, who did not want to be named.
>“Square dancing is a problem left over from history. Many elderly people feel that the whole China is built by their generation. They have the absolute voice and status. We young people have done nothing, and of course are not qualified to question them.”
>“I tried to communicate with them once, but the police stopped me,” said the Guiyang man. “They thought I was going to do something bad. You know the golden rule of Chinese policy: the larger number of people matters. Everything is based on social maintenance.”
Hardly sounds like a "really good" part of culture to me.
you can argue whether they maybe should tone down the noise a little but the health benefits, both physical and social as well as even the capital benefits, from the article:
"China is home to an estimated 100 million dancing grannies. Square dancing allows older women, many of whom live alone or with younger family members who they accompanied on a move to the cities, to socialise. They form strong bonds, often shopping or doing other activities, including group investments, together, the South China Morning Post reported"
are most likely very, very high and almost certainly underestimated. The kind of social security that comes out of having these kinds of relations well into old age probably saves society an incalculable amount of resources compared to the risk of social and financial isolation if these women could not meet.
Maybe find a way to make the grannies a little less militant but you would be straight up foolish to not encourage the elderly to socialize.
>the health benefits, both physical and social as well as even the capital benefits, are most likely very, very high and almost certainly underestimated.
I'd argue it's you who's underestimating the social and capital damage those gangs of elderly people hogging public places can cause to the working population.
It's apparent that had it been youngsters stirring up such racket in the name of "social benefits", they would have promptly been squashed. You can't just go and disturb and/or deny access to public places to other people just because you need to "socialize", it's just unfair.
Yep. Sounds like they need noise level regulation and enforcement.
The complaints I have heard have been very careful to separate the exercise, which is fine and good, from the excessive noise level during sleep time, which is not.
The article doesn't give a good sense of what proportion of that public is causing issues. Of course it's going to be easy to cherry-pick problematic behavior on that kind of sample size.
> I'd argue it's you who's underestimating the social and capital damage those gangs of elderly people hogging public places can cause to the working population.
I'd bet the damage is nearly impossible to underestimate.
Loudspeaker early in the morning are an absolute nightmare. It makes lives of every resident living hell. Maybe if it happens next to your house, you'll realize
Those sound like a few isolated incidences that probably are blown out of proportion. 3-4 events and a quote by some teenager out of events that happen probably a million times a day, is a pretty low rate of issues.
“Square dancing is a problem left over from history."
If only I'd thought of that line in junior high gym class. Of course, it would probably just have earned me twenty push ups and an even worse reputation.
In theory you are right but the reality of these dancing grannies is that they can be loud as hell. Like, disturbingly loud over a huge area and the noise pollution they introduce can be bad even by China's fairly noisy urban environments. Public spaces get tons of use without them, anyway. Also, sometimes they are fine and completely benign. It's the ones that become a local "thing" and draw huge crowds as well as that have no consideration for the surrounding residences that are a problem. I love the sounds of daily life in China (even the occasional new business opening fireworks extravaganza at 7am, lol) but the noisiest of these dancing granny groups are really a bit much.
Unless, of course, you would like to sleep after 6 AM. Some of those grannies will compensate for their own hearing loss by making the music more noisy. When I was living in Vietnam and opened the window of my flat, I could sometimes here them from a park that was 3 side roads away. It must be genuinely painful for those that live above the park.
seems like some of these dancing grannies would do right to invest in a few pairs of wireless headphones.. maybe theres an initial embarassment hurdle to overcome but ive been to a "silent disco"-type event before and that quickly passes
I see events often as well, but in China its more like I saw these events in public squares, constantly. People dancing, or exercising, or playing badminton in pretty large groups. Its not there's a few events a week, like in the US. Its there are multiple events a day.
Yeah it seems more part of the daily routine in China... the elderly wake up, and congregate in the local park for dancing or exercise.
In the US it's kind of "event" based. Like you have a farmer's market once a week for a few months... or a local yoga teacher offers weekly classes in the park to drum up business for their studio.
I've never seen seniors congregating in public spaces in the US like I have in various cities throughout China. The closest I've seen may be "mall walkers" who will show up when malls first open and wander around together... but it pales in comparison. It makes me wonder if we've ruined ourselves with our idea of individualism or something.
These are not ordinary old people. These are the old red guard, the lost generation. They ruled the streets, they do not abide to any law but there own in masses, but at gunpoint. This is the outcome of a horrific social experiment gone bad and it will renovate its flat at 3 in the morning with jackhammers, not giving a shit about your sleep.
They will dance the night through, in the midst of the city.
Your sleep be damned.
This device is a god send.
A huge amount of things in the US seem to be go somewhere and pay money to use the space. Whether its taking a class somewhere, a gym, going to a mall/store. Even then outside a few major cities, most places you need to drive to public places.
I mean, some of the US is like that. Other parts of the US, like where I live, have some pretty good public spaces available. I've got a park down the street with soccer fields, baseball and softball fields, a half court basketball setup, a fishing pond, picnic tables at the edge of some woods with grills, multiple playgrounds focusing on different kids ages/sizes/abilities. I can hop on a bus near my home and go to the larger sports complex with fancier fields and more organized teams, or the recreation centers with gymnasiums, board games to check out, tennis courts, waterparks, hobby meetings, etc. I see people using these facilities a good bit, there's usually people walking the trails around the parks, children playing on the playgrounds, people hanging out around the picnic tables, the pool and waterpark facilities get crowded at times. And then I can hop on the train and take it downtown to all the parks and other resources available there. And I live in a suburb!
Lots of people in the US who feel there are no public city services often just don't realize the services their city already provides or are unaware of how to use them. Even in my city which has absolutely wonderful city services, I often find friends and neighbors completely unaware of the things which exist. We have busses running all over my town but I imagine if you asked any random person if they knew any local bus route they would have no idea where to even begin.
I feel like part of this is the ability to exclude others; ironically exclusion (or exclusivity) seems to be an important part of the American identity. I had hosted a birthday party at a public park at one point, and one of the parents had asked me if I was worried about other people being there.
In the US, we have a problem of "drained pool" politics[1], where white people will vote to take away public amenities (like the eponymous public swimming pools) from themselves, because they can no longer exclude Black people from them.
Well you cant rely on public space being available unless you permit it which is a hassle. So not a great option for a regular thing. These dancing grannies can only do it bc they bully people into leaving.
This is the first I've heard this, but I live in a heavily Chinese part of Northern California. The parks have very small groups of Chinese women dancing in the mornings, but that's it. It sounds like it's a much bigger thing in China. Taking over the basketball courts? Wow.
My feeling is, it's harmless here. I wouldn't presume to tell the Chinese what they ought to do about it over there.
We lack public dancing space, yes, but the US typically has a lot of space open for exercise, although not in the same manner. In almost every town and city you'll find basketball courts, baseball fields, high school football stadiums with tracks typically open (and available) around them. It's organized in a different way and promotes different types of social interactions, but that's more a result of underlying desire for sprawl...which is something China can't afford.
The problem are the apartments around those squares, or even just near them. Noise pollution is a touchy subject in dense urban China, and sound carries very easily.
> This is just one of the many reasons why Chinese cities are almost universally better than American cities (more walkable, better transit, easy navigation, more public spaces. Though they do love their super blocks).
American cities aren't God's finest work, but I'm curious: have you actually spent any time in Chinese cities and if you have, how much time have you spent in second and third-tier cities?
I personally believe that interfering with people socializing and building a community is a negative. I concede that there can be issues with some events. But these are people who are a little loud, and is ruining many people's enjoyment for one person's enjoyment.
Sleep is not about enjoyment, it is one of the most important influences on long-term health. Even more important than "a little loud" music and dancing at a time others want to rest.
From all I've heard the chinese work week is challenging enough as it is, even without noise pollution on top.
You could make the same argument about noisy neighbors having house parties late at night. Does their right to play loud music supersede the neighborhood's right to a good night's sleep?
There are many ways to socialize and build community. Why do they need to pick this specific way?
> Chinese cities have much much less park spaces compared to the US. This is one reason for this to happen.
Yes, but isn't the soccer style sport the anti-social behavior as far as space usage is concerned? A future generation of retired soccer players not limited by the one-child policy wouldn't need any other groups to fight with over land use.
When I lived in Shanghai back in 2002, old ladies used to do this same thing, but to slower, traditional Chinese music, not this Chinese-dance-pop-fusion music. I'll take the traditional Chinese music any day.
Dancing grannies are actually one of the aspects about China that I absolutely love. I can go out anywhere I want at any time of the night and feel safe. Why? Hoards of wholesome dancing grannies fill all of those dark spaces normally occupied by drug addicts and hoodlums in Western countries.
They make the public spaces feel 'alive'. I've lived in my different cities in the West including those in Western Europe and North America, and all too often public spaces become completely dead and devoid of life all because people have become so fearful of offending others or looking stupid. Everyone just wants to keep to themselves and be left alone. Suburbs are practically ghost towns with everyone (probably on their devices) hiding inside their homes. Physical social networks are clearly on the decline and as a result, depression and loneliness has become an absolute epidemic in the West. The problem only gets exponentially worse as one ages.
Happy dancing grannies engaging in physical exercise, socializing and helping to keep the community safe is what Western countries to be aspiring to have, instead of criticizing and ridiculing.
A lot of Americans have no frame of reference for what you're describing because they've never lived somewhere where "dangerous parts" of the city dont make up a large part of it. My experience in Beijing/Shanghai was that some parts are ultra modern and other parts are run down, but even the run down parts don't feel dangerous and don't put you on alert for getting mugged/robbed. People in the US believe that it's all a strict mathematics/economics function where poverty=danger and nothing can be done about it, they've given up on the culture part of it and just enable the epidemic of junkie and needles and sketchy people take up large swathes of public space, especially on the west coast.
I don't think it is culture or at least not the permanent kind. Asia has plenty of crime. Quite severe crime, and organized crime, and personal crime. From what I've heard large Chinese cities used to have a lot more crime. You can still see the bars on the windows of older buildings.
Just like it is hard to understand that these large cities are generally safe it is also hard to understand the amount of development that has happened. By now most would have probably heard the stories or seen the pictures of things like changing skylines. But it's different when you go there. Almost every year there is one or more projects completed that would have taken 10 or 20 years in western countries. And not just shopping malls but projects that actually do something.
It's really hard to pessimistic with that kind of change despite being faced with a very real reality everyday. We used to speculate that China might be the best country to be born in today. Because it would take ~20+ years until you enter the workforce. And if the next 20 years are like the past 20 years you could do really well. That outlook has of course dimmed a bit since then.
What I'm trying to say it that when people believe things will get better they don't want to give up their future. When things stagnant or getting worse people are hopeless they feel like they have nothing to lose. Crime seems to be factor of that. Maybe just not to those ending up committing the crimes but for everyone else as well.
It's not surprising to me that some crimes and social unrest is on the rise in supposedly prosperous countries when everything is getting expensive, opportunities are getting harder to come by and those opportunities you do have count for less. If those at the top of society all act like there is no tomorrow, or that tomorrow doesn't matter, we shouldn't expect those at the bottom to act any differently. I can agree that this sort of culture, the one of acts and impressions, makes a huge difference.
At least my experience living in Asia is that the crime and drug use still exists, the reason it looks cleaner is simply the police and government don’t tolerate it in public.
Unlike the West, if you’re a drug addict in a lot of Asian countries you’re arrested and put in jail. Or sentenced to treatment which is basically jail for people with mental issues.
a fond memory of visiting beijing many years ago is all the old folks doing tai chi in various parks and empty lots around the city at like 7am. it made the city feel warm and alive. where i live (in LA), you see folks out jogging and walking their dog at that time, but it’s mostly all solitary activity.
where i live (in LA), you see folks out jogging and walking their dog at that time, but it’s mostly all solitary activity.
In some of the large American cities where I've lived, the parks are populated by groups of Lululemons doing yoga in the morning. Some cities, like Chicago and Houston, even organize the events.
Considering the lifestyle I remember from my L.A. days, I'd say there's probably a yoga group in a park not too far from where you live.
Beijing megablock with 30k residents and vibrant commercial / social activities on ground floor is a nice taste of new urbanism. That said, dancing grannies with boom boxes blasting until 10pm on a school night is what noise regulations are for. And at least in my old compound, security had a very hard enforcing it. Hopefully this is an addressible problem for headphone companies when wireless broadcast technologies advances.
This phenomenon occurs in Hong Kong too. When I asked a local why he disapproves he said it's not actually HK culture but a relatively recent thing due to the influx of mainlanders.
> Yet the dancing grannies took over a soccer field, while a game was in play.
I'd be interested in knowing the full story. Was it some kids kicking a ball around, or was it an organized match scheduled ahead of time on the playing field?
Where I used to live in Seattle, I knew that the grannies would come every week at a certain gym floor. Did they have a reservation? No, but I wasn't going to be an asshole and try to interrupt elderly women dancing and socializing.
(One could however criticize LA Fitness[1] for putting the dance floors and boxing bags in the same room!)
Now if they barged into a professional sports arena and tried to take over, hah, yeah, that's a problem! :)
[1] I actually have a number of criticisms of the old DT Bellevue LA Fitness but since they aren't there anymore, it doesn't much matter.
The interruption of a single soccer game is probably more damage than the benefit of the social activity of 100 million members of a group that is usually isolated and lonely in other societies?
This is hysterics. Maybe if they interrupted every soccer game, there'd be something to worry about (then to think about, then to again stop worrying about.)
> Last year one group in Lanzhou city, Gansu, found a solution that make everyone happy by using bluetooth earphones, holding their own version of a silent disco.
I actually wonder if Bluetooth 5.2 with mass broadcasting features could be a solution. Some 5.2 hearing aids with voice pass through options to keep back ground music down, half the reason the music is so loud is they're old and going deaf anyway. With current tech, bunch of grandmas still need to sync up ipods like a flash mob which isn't going to happen.
While its hard to target the particular device, jamming all Bluetooth isn't too hard. My old microwave was pretty effective at jamming darn near everything around 2.4GHz when operating.
I've researched, and even with several ESP32s its impossible. There are 79 frequency bands, and one would have to jam most of them. Talking about battery-operated device here, not a 1000W microwave.
You're approaching a topic of doing something against the rules with hardware that's certified to try and follow the rules as much as possible. If you're going to try and break the rules, its going to be easier to go about breaking it with hardware designed to break the rules, or at least without those rules in mind. There's 80MHz of bandwidth to try and raise the noise floor high enough that normal devices can't communicate.
Using Bluetooth chipsets aren't a great idea as they're optimized to think of it as 79 independent channels of which you need to select one. And on that, then try and send something of the standards and all the limitations involved in a normal device. Luckily, 2.4GHz WiFi runs on the exact same frequencies, its pretty easy to get your hands on 40MHz wide channel chips, and they don't have any real considerations as to the protocols and limitations of Bluetooth. Two hackable WiFi chipsets might be able to get you closer to abusing Bluetooth, you'll just want to set it to the wider 40MHz channels on each, ensure you set it to the Japanese frequencies or you'll miss the upper end of the Bluetooth bands, and then start sending out tons of junk at a higher than allowed power level. If you can somehow find something that lets you transmit on 80MHz wide 2.4GHz channels then you'd only need a single chipset to do it, but I'd imagine those would be exceptionally rare.
Note: as an amateur radio operator, RF enthusiast, and a fellow human being who likes his devices working, please don't break the rules.
Hoping Bluetooth 5.2 with mass broadcasting features could be a solution. Some 5.2 hearing aids with voice pass through options to keep back ground music down, half the reason the music is so loud is they're old and going deaf anyway. With current tech, bunch of grandmas still need to sync up ipods like a flash mob which isn't going to happen. Add in spatial audio to simulate physical boom box. Apple get on this. As someone with ANC headphones all the time, personally very excited for when communal audio / seemless enviromental broadcast becomes a thing.
Get a good pair of ANC headphones. They won't cancel everything, but play a rain loop and you're gold. This has been very useful to me while WFH. I can't sleep with them on, though; I get nightmares if I sleep on my back.
This entire article isn’t passing the sniff test for me.
Not only am I skeptical of the technology but I’m skeptical there’s an actual problem here. On the surface it feels like a softball seat filler of an article.
It's less of a problem (on the scale of Covid or climate change) and more of a familiar annoyance. It's not causing major harm, but it's still a cultural problem: Some people don't care about others.
Have you ever heard/felt a motorcycle going by while the operator flicked the throttle to cause the engine to backfire so loudly you felt it in your chest? Don't turn your head, if you look at them they'll think you think they're cool and they'll come back later so they can feel cool again. If you talk to them, they'll tell you loud pipes save lives, and when you point out that studies show that most motorcycle accidents occur due to vehicles in front of the bike, while the Doppler effect, modern cars' road noise deadening construction, and the bike's exhaust orientation direct most of the noise behind the bike, so they only serve to annoy pedestrians, they'll tell you they think they're cool.
Have you been sunbathing at the beach, risking falling asleep from the comfortable warmth of the sun, gentle rhythm of the waves, and the laughter of children playing, when someone brought a surprisingly loud Bluetooth speaker and decided that instead of those sounds you all needed to hear 90s party pop? On asking them, they might turn the music up, clearly what this beach needs is a little more NSYNC.
Have you been filling up your gas tank at a quiet gas station when a pickup truck rolled in with its windows down and country music coming over the radio, and the driver shut the engine off, opened the doors, and left the radio running so the entire assembled group of tired commuters, who were all clearly in need of some tunes, could listen together? Everyone loves country music, and those who don't, just need some exposure and then they'll like it.
I've only been to Shanghai once, and yes, the dancing grannies are a real thing that were present at a bunch of parks, but even in American national parks the same Red Guard generation of Chinese tourists are well known to be frequently rude.
This kind of behavior is rude. Put on some headphones, please, or at least turn down the volume: you shouldn't assume an exclusive right to the auditory experience of everyone at a public park.
Look at the author's publishing history. Nothing but Australian fluff news until 2019 then she started posting upwards of two "China bad" articles a day nearly every day since.
The US' war on China means that anti-China sentiment is on the rise and that means dollar signs for publishers who are happy to toe the line.
Yeah, the implicit tone of this article is "check out this foreign curiosity, isn't it so weird?" similar to the articles about rental families in Japan.
I'm in Oaxaca, Mexico, and they've got a group of people dancing to a boombox in the park here. I've lived many years in Bangkok, and the same. Seems hard to pin it explicitly on the CCP.
While I’m sure it’s rather annoying. Like when you live in a city and your neighbors insist on having you enjoy their taste in music, this is very cunning.
They play retro communist-nationalistic tunes, which Xi is bringing back to prominence, so complaints could be taken to be counterrevolutionary )these grannies harken back to Mao’s movements.
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/144646248724781465...